This invention concerns a device to move skips in the scrap charging zone and also concerns a method, arising from the employment of such device, for the movement of skips.
Steelworks have for some time now been practising a method of charging skips with scrap which enables the skips to be filled to the maximum extent possible, the purpose being to speed up the operations of charging smelting furnaces.
To obtain this, a press for scrap has been adopted which enables the scrap to be compacted when it has been introduced into the skips.
To make the compaction action possible, a cradle has also been pre-arranged which accomodates the base of the skips, holds them and positions them.
In this description the word "cradle" covers a very wide range of supports for skips undergoing press action. Such cradle serves also to move the skips within a given limited scope.
During introduction of the scrap the skip is normally borne on an appropriate support or pallet with legs, which also serves normally for the weighing of the charge.
Such support with legs enables the skip to be moved along long distances by means of appropriate vehicles having substantially one single surface with a vertically movable platform. Such vehicles are introduced between the legs of the support, raise their platform, lift the support with the skip thereupon and move this assemblage wherever it is required.
At the required position such vehicles lower their platform, let the legs of the support rest on the ground and depart to move another skip.
Appropriate cranes then transfer the skip from its support to a cradle, which then conveys the skip below the press. This is the system used now and requires the presence of a crane of a great capacity to move the whole. Moreover, the known system makes it necessary to move the skip under the press by means of a cradle.
This entails a considerable immobilization of working equipment and therefore of finance and also very long working times. When one single press has to serve six or more areas employed in the preparation of skips, such working times become very long with long waiting queues due to the transfer times.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,470,580 discloses a press for scrap with a two-dimensional press die and a means to position and support the skip. The means to position and support the skip is a movable carriage with means to transfer the carriage itself, which runs on its own runways.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,416,436 discloses a scrap press cooperating with at least one charging and discharging station, the skip holding the scrap being moved on guides from that station to the press and back; the press is equipped with an extractor jack.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,568,236 discloses a trailer with a movable platform to move heavy loads on roads and highways.
EP No. 0.035.568 discloses a press to make briquettes, in which a carriage holding a mould cooperates with the press itself.